Engineers, more than anything else, don't like it when you piss on their leg and tell them its raining. Musk's statements here are Ballmer-esque marketing doublespeak: We've been focused on "safety" to date [don't mind that our cars run themselves into concrete barriers], and will roll out "full autonomy features" in the next software update [don't mind the NTSB report that shows that our technology is a glorified version of the lane-keeping everyone else is already doing].

I think a lot of the reaction on HN is the result of people simply realizing the large delta between what Tesla claims to have, what people thought Tesla has, and what it actually has.

What you perceive as emotional venting I think is actually frustration that we are again seeing a media darling company making grandiose claims about its products while the experts on places like HN insist that those claims are dangerously exceeding its true capabilities. A person died as a direct result of Tesla's insistence that they can call it an autopilot/self driving car while knowing full well that it was not designed to avoid stationary objects in the roadway. Press F to pay respects.